three books

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

I missed last weeks drawing challenge which had the theme of "what's that?" (check it out at carolereidartist.blogspot.ca) but I couldn't resist adding a little twist and saying a word or two about a game I frequently play called "what's that word". In fact it was Carole that I was talking to the other day when I suddenly lost some typically common word in the middle of a sentence causing us to ponder, deviate, laugh and eventually extract the word or possibly some other word that meant something similar - whatever - we did eventually get back on track, I think.
Ah menopause! Quoting another friend who suffers the same malady I said, "the nouns go first" which is the standing joke when struggling for clarity in conversation with that friend. Clearly this is a common issue and I think that there is a golden opportunity here for some young genius to invent a phone app designed to retrieve those lost words. You could key in something like - it's that thing that does (blah) or means (blah) - and it would fill in the blank for you. Sort of like playing Jeopardy or a reverse look up dictionary where you supply the answer instead of the question.
But, maybe it would be like spell checker and get it wrong half the time so you'd be dropping totally random words into the conversation as if that were exactly what you meant to say.
Who's going to know?
If you were causal enough you could slip 'em right on by just like that because of course you knew I meant to say casual so that's probably how you read it anyway. Same goes in any conversation when someone uses the wrong word your brain simply fills in the one that makes more sense and barely registers the error.
Just think of how much thinking we would no longer have to do if we had an app like that. No more playing "what's that word" whereby friends and family are just as likely to supply the wrong word also which often ends up taking the conversation so far off topic that no one remembers what you started out trying to describe - and by that time in really doesn't matter anyway. Let it go.
And speaking of letting it go I just want to pass along this little comment I came across the other day which does warrant remembering. I wish I knew who to attribute it to - I hope they don't mind my adding a little visual.